I know this isn't exactly along the lines of this thread, but I have to answer Dredge.... I can't stop myself...This is an explanation (a bad one--pure guesswork) that I don't think I've heard before. And I've heard a lot of explanations. I'd like to hear your creative excuses for other annihilations in the OT. Hey! I know! We can play a game! I like games. How about I'll give you a few Bible events and you tell me another explanation for them. After all, this explanation of yours was cool. So here we go.......

*Numbers 31:7-18 God orders all Midianites killed, except virgin girls and girl children (those were reserved for the Israelite men-- a little feisty reward for their hard work of war)*Deuteronomy 3 God's people wiped out 60 whole cities and villages, men women and children. But they got to keep the livestock and plunder. (Score!) Then they divided the land up between them. *Joshua 6 The Israelites destroyed the entire city of Jericho: men, women, children and livestock too! (Joshua fought the battle of Jericho, Jericho, Jericho....... and the walls came tumbling down!)*Judges 21 11 of the 12 tribes of Israel murdered everyone in Jabesh Gilead (their own people!) Except the virgins again.... because they needed wives for one of their tribes. Oh! But there weren't enough virgins for all the men, so the men were ordered to hide alongside the road, and when they saw a girl who was pleasing to their eye, they ambushed her and carried her away to another city to make her his "wife". (AKA rape her repeatedly until she gave up). Chivalry wasn't their strong point.....Ok, just one more, I have to stop somewhere.....*1 Samuel 15 God orders the slaughter of the Amalekites- men, women, children, and animals (I guess none of them needed wives this time)OK Dredge, ask the Holy Spirit to give you fresh insight and knock my socks off!

I'm unfamiliar with a couple of these events, so I'll have to read up on them, before I respond.

In the meantime, consider that the Caananites were destroyed, apart from their Nephilim blood-lines, as a result of there evil practices, such as child sacrifice.

And, "Now the Lord said to Abram, 'Go from your country and your kindred and your father's house to the land [of the Caananites] that I will show you. And I will make you a great nation, and I will bless you and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and him who curses you I will curse; and by you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.'" - Genesis 12:1-3.

I'm unfamiliar with a couple of these events, so I'll have to read up on them, before I respond.

In the meantime, consider that the Caananites were destroyed, apart from their Nephilim blood-lines, as a result of there evil practices, such as child sacrifice.

And, "Now the Lord said to Abram, 'Go from your country and your kindred and your father's house to the land [of the Caananites] that I will show you. And I will make you a great nation, and I will bless you and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and him who curses you I will curse; and by you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.'" - Genesis 12:1-3.

First, Dredge, thanks for responding at all. Second, your responses are quite unsatisfactory to me. You say in this post that God destroyed Canaanites because of child sacrifice (among other evils, of course), yet God himself ordered his own version of child sacrifice (and adult sacrifice). Repeatedly. For land. Can you kind of see where a person might have a problem with this?And your adherence to defending this God's bloody orders is quite unsettling. Because if God shouldn't be questioned, if he just needs to be obeyed because he's GOD, and we are just simple humans, without any real "understanding", then any ole person today can justify ANY thing by saying that God told him or her to do it. You see where this could lead? We can see where this HAS lead. So when you ask if we think the church is really that gullible and stupid.... well, yes. Yes we do. But don't get me wrong. I know how it feels to love this God and to want to defend him to skeptics and heathens. I know how it feels to be so frustrated with people questioning my intelligence because of my beliefs. I also know that there may come a time when all of the stupid, pat answers may not be enough any more. When you start wondering why this God needs you to defend him. When that time comes, don't be scared. Follow those questions all the way. After all, if He's really God, he should be able to stand up to the scrutiny, right? Be inquisitive, and be brave.

I know that the Catholic church is composed of human beings. Human beings exhibit many qualities, among them gullibility and stupidity, as well has dishonesty and greed. Your church is no more exempt from these than any other group of people, as history has repeatedly shown.

Am I to understand that with this you are now counting yourself among the Christians who justify the murder of babies, Dredge?

Point 1 - Do you know who the Nephilim were? When bird flu strikes, entire communities of poultry have to killed to stop the spread of the disease.

Point 2 - "Hallelujah! Salvation and glory and power belong to out God, for his judgements are true and just!" - Revelation 19:2.

Point 3 - It sounds a tad disingenuous for someone who approves of abortion to be concerned about the murder of babies. People who live in glass houses shouldn't throw stones.

I'll take that as a "yes." Congratulations. In this thread you've moved from questioning whether any Christians actually justified the murder of babies to being a Christian that justifies murdering babies. You must be proud of this manifestation of spiritual growth.

I know that the Catholic church is composed of human beings. Human beings exhibit many qualities, among them gullibility and stupidity, as well has dishonesty and greed. Your church is no more exempt from these than any other group of people, as history has repeatedly shown.

Am I to understand that with this you are now counting yourself among the Christians who justify the murder of babies, Dredge?

Point 1 - Do you know who the Nephilim were? When bird flu strikes, entire communities of poultry have to killed to stop the spread of the disease.

Point 2 - "Hallelujah! Salvation and glory and power belong to out God, for his judgements are true and just!" - Revelation 19:2.

Point 3 - It sounds a tad disingenuous for someone who approves of abortion to be concerned about the murder of babies. People who live in glass houses shouldn't throw stones.

I'll take that as a "yes." Congratulations. In this thread you've moved from questioning whether any Christians actually justified the murder of babies to being a Christian that justifies murdering babies. You must be proud of this manifestation of spiritual growth.

If I may make a prediction as to how he may respond, if it's anything like the bread and wine where he says form and substance are not the same, then he will have some leap of logic here as well.

Btw Jesus said the bread and wine are his blood and body flesh so "form and substance" has no relevance. It's either he said it and dredge contradicted him, or Jesus was wrong. But I'm willing to say it's both.

Am I to understand that with this you are now counting yourself among the Christians who justify the murder of babies, Dredge?

Point 1 - Do you know who the Nephilim were? When bird flu strikes, entire communities of poultry have to killed to stop the spread of the disease.

I'd hold an omnipotent poultry keeper to a higher standard than a mere human.Farmer God should be able to selectively smite only the infected chooks.How does disease get a look in with his chooks? mysterious ways I suppose.

^^^ True Dat. Why couldn't god selectively rid the poor Canaanite people of all traces of Nephilim? Maybe a nice plague that only affects heavenly DNA? maybe mental illness, so that they would be shunned by their society? There are so many options, and even more for an almighty, creative god. Why does this God so often seem to rely on these violent, greedy Israelites to do His bidding? It's just not the path that I would choose if I was God. He could really use a few pointers....

Yeah why not just cure all the disease? Why even have disease? It seems more and more this book was written by a guy who didn't understand anything and reacted with aggression and violence and said it was God's will. Kind of like when a human doesn't understand something and makes something up to compensate for it's ignorance. God was the compensation for their ignorance.

I don't know who the Nephilim were.Could you please tell me who they were, according to you, and/or your god?

I think you're asking Dredge this question, but to save time, I can answer. The popular thought is that Nephilim were the offspring of "sons of God" (fallen angels? Actual young gods? Regular humans; because elsewhere in the Bible, men are referred to as sons of God? We don't really know) and human women. The Bible doesn't say a whole lot about them, except that women found them "beautiful" (super hot), they were men of "great size", and they were "mighty men, men of reknown".The Bible is pretty cloudy about whether they were god or bad, they seem good upon a first reading, but if you read into surrounding passages of scripture, you might see that they were evil. Some people even think that they were aliens. So, in other words, nobody really knows who the Nephilim were. There certainly isn't enough info in that Bible to justify mass genocide to eradicate them.

I don't know who the Nephilim were.Could you please tell me who they were, according to you, and/or your god?

I think you're asking Dredge this question, but to save time, I can answer. The popular thought is that Nephilim were the offspring of "sons of God" (fallen angels? Actual young gods? Regular humans; because elsewhere in the Bible, men are referred to as sons of God? We don't really know) and human women. The Bible doesn't say a whole lot about them, except that women found them "beautiful" (super hot), they were men of "great size", and they were "mighty men, men of reknown".The Bible is pretty cloudy about whether they were god or bad, they seem good upon a first reading, but if you read into surrounding passages of scripture, you might see that they were evil. Some people even think that they were aliens. So, in other words, nobody really knows who the Nephilim were. There certainly isn't enough info in that Bible to justify mass genocide to eradicate them.

Thanks, Dragonia, I appreciate you taking the time to answer me.

It is confusing, , but thank you for trying to explain it to me.

When Dredge said:

Quote

Point 1 - Do you know who the Nephilim were? When bird flu strikes, entire communities of poultry have to killed to stop the spread of the disease.

I thought there was going to be a 'huge revelation' behind this Nephilim story, but...there's nothing. Why would he bring up the Nephilim story to justify "god's order" to murder babies?

I don't know who the Nephilim were.Could you please tell me who they were, according to you, and/or your god?

I think you're asking Dredge this question, but to save time, I can answer. The popular thought is that Nephilim were the offspring of "sons of God" (fallen angels? Actual young gods? Regular humans; because elsewhere in the Bible, men are referred to as sons of God? We don't really know) and human women. The Bible doesn't say a whole lot about them, except that women found them "beautiful" (super hot), they were men of "great size", and they were "mighty men, men of reknown".The Bible is pretty cloudy about whether they were god or bad, they seem good upon a first reading, but if you read into surrounding passages of scripture, you might see that they were evil. Some people even think that they were aliens. So, in other words, nobody really knows who the Nephilim were. There certainly isn't enough info in that Bible to justify mass genocide to eradicate them.

Thanks, Dragonia, I appreciate you taking the time to answer me.

It is confusing, , but thank you for trying to explain it to me.

When Dredge said:

Quote

Point 1 - Do you know who the Nephilim were? When bird flu strikes, entire communities of poultry have to killed to stop the spread of the disease.

I thought there was going to be a 'huge revelation' behind this Nephilim story, but...there's nothing. Why would he bring up the Nephilim story to justify "god's order" to murder babies?

But the people who live there are powerful, and the cities are fortified and very large. We even saw descendants of Anak there. The Amalekites live in the Negev; the Hittites, Jebusites and Amorites live in the hill country; and the Canaanites live near the sea and along the Jordan.”

Then Caleb silenced the people before Moses and said, “We should go up and take possession of the land, for we can certainly do it.”

But the men who had gone up with him said, “We can’t attack those people; they are stronger than we are.” And they spread among the Israelites a bad report about the land they had explored. They said, “The land we explored devours those living in it. All the people we saw there are of great size. We saw the Nephilim there (the descendants of Anak come from the Nephilim). We seemed like grasshoppers in our own eyes, and we looked the same to them.”

The thing is, according the the Bible the Nephilim existed in the pre-Deluge world. Therefore they should have all died when YHVH sent his Great Flood, along with every other damned human being on the planet except for Noah and his family. How Nephilim reappeared among the descendants of the righteous Noah is not explained in the Bible.

The focus on the Nephilim is a Protestant thing--the Catholic church doesn't give them a lot of attention, so it will be interesting to see what Dredge comes up with.